How Deadly Monkey Pox Is – What Scientists Know

After the coronavirus pandemic, humanity is faced with yet another “new” disease: Monkey Smallpox. A disease that is transmitted mainly through sexual contact and has forced high-ranking figures in the Health organizations to compare it to AIDS. The comparison alone with the extremely deadly disease HIV is terrifying. But how deadly is the Monkey pox;

As the authoritative journal Nature reports, the global epidemic of monkeypox has caused some deaths, but the fatality rate is lower than expected. Of more than 57,000 people confirmed to have been infected with monkeypox, at least 22 have died, representing a case fatality rate of about 0.04%. This is significantly less than the 1-3% reported during outbreaks caused by a similar virus strain in West Africa in recent decades.

All of this has caused researchers to re-evaluate what they thought they knew about the -really-severe monkeypox.

But in reality, the true death rate is almost certainly higher than current estimates: countries in some parts of the world, including Africa, may not be recording all deaths during this outbreak because they have limited resources for testing and surveillance. And it could still increase, especially if the virus spreads more widely among people at high risk of severe disease, such as children, the elderly and people with severely compromised immune systems, says Andrea McCollum, an epidemiologist who leads the smallpox virus team at the USA.

What ages and who it “hits” the most

However, for the community most affected so far – young and middle-aged men who have sex with people of the same sex – the disease can be “extremely painful” and “causes a lot of pain”, says Jason Zucker, a physician specializing in infectious diseases at Columbia University in New York, who has treated people for monkeypox. The pain results from characteristic fluid-filled pimples caused by the disease. Although some people have been hospitalized for life-threatening complications, such as difficulty breathing or swelling of the brain, Zucker says, it was more common to see people hospitalized for pain management.

In the current outbreak, clinicians have seen fewer lesions overall than in previous outbreaks in Africa. But a greater percentage of damage occurs in the mucous tissues of the body. Previously, the lesions appeared mainly on the skin – on people’s hands, feet and faces. Mucosal lesions are not inherently more serious, but they aggravate sensitive tissue, so they can cause tremendous pain and interfere with swallowing, eating or drinking when they are in the throat, or urinating and defecating when they are in the genitals and right, says Zucker.

These lesions are also more difficult to detect and characterize than skin lesions. This means that the monkeypox severity scale recommended by World Health Organization (WHO)which uses the number of lesions as a surrogate for disease severity, may need a more abstract approach, McCollum says.

So far during the global outbreak, deaths from monkeypox have occurred in at least ten countries, including Brazil, India, Nigeria and Spain. Efforts are underway to understand how the virus contributed to these deaths.

Some people who died — including one in the United States and one in Mexico — were severely immunocompromised and had serious illnesses other than monkeypox.

Cases of encephalitis due to the disease

Two people who died in Spain developed encephalitis, or brain swelling, and had no other known risk factors. Based on previous data on monkeypox, these deaths are “certainly concerning, but not surprising to us,” says McCollum. Encephalitis is a rare but serious complication of many viral diseases, including those caused by herpes simplex and West Nile virus, and is known to occur in otherwise healthy people who become infected, Zucker says. It is not yet known whether monkeypox encephalitis occurs as a result of the virus infecting brain tissues or because of an exaggerated immune response that causes brain swelling.

Researchers have also seen seizures and encephalitis in people with monkeypox during previous outbreaks: a review of previous monkeypox literature published Sept. 8 found severe neurological symptoms in less than 3% of 1,512 people that were analyzed.

“We need to move beyond thinking of monkeypox as a skin and respiratory disease,” says Jonathan Rogers, a neuropsychiatrist at University College London who co-authored the analysis. The monkeypox virus may have evolved from previous outbreaks, but scientists are also learning new things about it because of the wider and geographically diverse population it now affects.

More research is needed to understand which people are most at risk of developing severe monkeypox—and which routes of transmission may be more dangerous, McCollum says. After a 2003 outbreak on United Stateswhen a shipment of rodents from Ghana spread the virus to domestic prairie dogs in Illinois and infected more than 70 people, researchers noticed that the severity of the disease varied.. People who were scratched or bitten by infected animals tended to have more severe disease. than humans exposed to respiratory droplets and particles from animals.

Although most infections in the current outbreak are due to intimate sexual contact, McCollum says, where on the body the virus first infects — skin versus mucous tissue — may dictate the severity of the disease.

More data is also needed to understand whether the effects of a severe case of monkeypox can linger after an infection is cleared, Zucker says. In their analysis, Rogers and colleagues noted that it is common to see scars at the sites of previous lesions. Not only could scarring cause stigma and depression, but it could also cause inflammation by constricting body channels like the esophagus and colon, Zucker says. “This is a reminder that this is not a mild disease,” says McCollum. “It could be very serious.”

Read the News today and get the latest news.
Follow Skai.gr on Google News and be the first to know all the news.